


Soulmates?

by Chrisoel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:41:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3862324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrisoel/pseuds/Chrisoel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In theory it's all very simple: at some point in your childhood letters will appear on the ringfinger of one of your hands. They spell your soulmate's name. The person you will fall in love with and with whom you will live happily ever after.<br/>Reality however can turn out to be a bit more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Brienne is eight when her soulmate's name appears on the ring finger of her left hand. _Renly._ She is very exited and stares at the black letters for hours, imagining to meet him.

She doesn't imagine his face or the colour of his hair or anything, but _how_ he will be. He will be kind and will never make fun of the fact that she is the tallest child in class or that her teeth are a bit too big or that her hair never looks shiny. He will love swimming as much as she does and he will look at her like her father looks at her mother in the old photos in the blue photo album and they will be happy together forever.

* * *

Brienne is sixteen when she meets Renly.

She was right about him being kind and not making fun of her.

But when she removes the ring covering her soulmate mark with clumsy fingers and shows him his name he looks up at her with eyes filled with pity.

He removes his own ring and shows her five letters that very decisively don't spell _Brienne._

 _Loras_ they spell and she remembers the teenager with the brown curls who had hugged Renly when leaving to drive his sister Margaery home. She had considered it a hug between friends, but now she realises that boys rarely hug mere friends so closely.

"He has mine on his finger." he tells her in a soft voice.

Renly will never look at Brienne like Selwyn looked at his wife because he already looks at someone this way.

"I am sorry Brienne, I truly am."

He sounds so sincere she has to believe him. She stumbles out of the room and spends several days holed up in her room, crying her eyes out, cursing her fate.

He never tells anybody she is one of those unfortunate people who have a soulmate without being this person's soulmate. He doesn't mock her in private either (and she has seen enough of the world to know some people would) and they actually become some sort of friends.

* * *

She meets Jaime Lannister when she is twenty-five and paired up with him after transfering to Kings Landing's police. He is in his late thirtees, the most good-looking man she has ever met in her life and an utter jerk. Twelve years earlier he shot his boss Aerys Targaryen on the job but never got convicted for it - for reasons no-one knows (or, like people whisper, everyone knows - rich family in politics).

He seems to hate everyone (including himself but excluding his little brother Tyrion) and spends their first weeks together asking inappropriate questions about her private life when not loudly doubting her skills or slurping unhealthy amounds of coffee (without ever offering her one).

* * *

Then they have a suspect sitting in front of them, and their boss Catelyn Stark has made it clear that the evidence they have against him is too thin for a conviction, they need a confession.

"Not gonna happen." Jaime tells her before stepping into the room. "Had to deal with this one before. Silent as a grave. Couldn't make him talk before, won't be able to do it now. We're wasting our time."

It takes her three days and on the fourth they have a neatly typed confession on Catelyn Stark's desk. He stares at her so intensely he walks into the door frame on the way out. 

When chopping carrots for dinner she wonders whether he his one of those men who can't stomach it if a women does their job better, but on the next morning he hands her a coffee before launching into a rant about everyones incompetence while failing to cite her as an example even once. 

She knows him well enough at this point to know that this is as near as one can get to receiving a compliment from Jaime. He doesn't stop teasing her, but now there is an underlying tone of respect in it.

* * *

Brienne knows hardly anyone in Kings Landing and accepts his offer to spend their freetime together.

She learns that he can't be bothered to cook but bakes most enthusiastically (and she thinks he is glad he can share his baked goods with someone). They fall into an easy routine on their free weekends, she cooks, he bakes ("Yes Jaime, it is necessary that you eat something else than cookies once in a while.")

They play boardgames (she always wins, he sulks and she nearly laughs her head of that he will gracefully accept being beaten at running or tennis but not at Scrabble). They go to the cinema and nearly get thrown out because Jaime keeps up a nonstop comentary on what the actors are really thinking. 

One day, when she sits next to his hospital bed after Jaime nearly got his hand chopped of by a member of a criminal gang known as the Bloody Mummers, he tells her what actually happend with Aerys Targaryen. He says he hasn't told anyone before and she knows they have become friends.

That doesn't change that they have one topic they both avoid: soulmates. She does wonder whether he doesn't have one or whether he or she is dead or whether he hasn't met the person yet or whether he had to go through the same thing as she has. But she is glad he doesn't pry and so she doesn't either.

And when time goes by she finds herself wishing she had his name on her skin, even if she only admits it to herself in the in-between-land between waking and sleeping.

* * *

When after a year and a half talk of promotion in their department comes up (nothing that gives one more authority or money or anything, it's more a change in title) Jaime fights tooth and nail for _her_ to get it. It culminates in him shouting at a mildly astonished Catelyn Stark at the top of his lungs for half the lunch break ("It has to be Brienne, there is absolutly no one who deserves a promotion more than her! Have you seen her interviewing suspects? I won't stand by if you don't give it to her!") before she manages to interrupt him.

"Mr. Lannister, I wholeheartedly approve of your newfound appreciation for other people's work but I assure you there is no need to defend Ms Tarth. She is the one I was going to give the promotion to in the first place and I would like to ask you to stop shouting at your superiors."

She walks out of the room leaving behind a slightly embarrassed Jaime and Brienne who is torn between being extremely embarrassed and extremely delighted about Jaime's behavior.

* * *

When she gets the promotion he spends the entire day telling all and sundry about it. (Including their boss. Catelyn listens patiently and murmurs "Does he think I'm suffering from amnesia?" when passing Brienne.) She feels like beeing twelve again and her dad telling every neighbor twice about her victory at the Stormlands Swimming Competition. And the postman. And the cashier in the supermarket. And the man who had repaired their broken heating. And the two women who had knocked at their door to talk about R'hllor.

He insists they have to celebrate and they compromise on getting drunk at her appartment.

"You have to get drunk! You've just been promoted, getting drunk is what people do! Ask Tyrion if you don't believe me!"

"Tyrion doesn't need any reason to get drunk, I'm not sure I'm ready to accept him as an authority." she tries to argue, but he pretends not to hear her.

"Getting drunk in bars would be better, but if you insist... I'm bringing the booze."

* * *

To her amusement it's him who all but forgets about the glas in front of him and just talks without end and by the time it is two thirty in the morning and she tries to figure out how to send him home in a polite way she feels like he told her his whole lifestory three times over. It becomes apparent he hasn't even started in earnest when he removes his ring and thrusts his hand at her. She has to squint a bit.

"Cersei. Eh... didn't you say your sister's name is Cersei? Your soulmate has the same name as your sister? I imagine that's sort of akward."

He shakes his head.

"My sister _is_ my soulmate. And I am hers."

Brienne opens her mouth, finds out she has no idea at all what to say and closes it again. Brother and sister that are soulmates? How is that possible?

"And..."

"We have each others names on our skin for longer than I can remember. And we... we lived it. Since we were teenagers. Brienne, I was so _happy_ even if she always said we had to keep it secret. I never understood. I mean, people believe the person whose name you have written on your finger is the person you are made for, don't they? And I believed it too, stupid as I was. Until I found out she was sleeping with other men."

"But... why.... if _you_ are her soulmate..."

He drags himself into a sitting position and looks at her with pity.

"Brienne, you don't believe that nonsense about soulmates, do you?"

He groans.

"Of course you do. It's rubbish! There is absolutly no scientific proof the person whose name you wear is the one you will be happy with. People use the word _soulmate_ because it sounds a lot fancier than _random-person-whose-name-is-written-on-my-finger_ , that's all."

"It's not! There is proof, all those couples which live happily together." she answers stubbornly.

"Bullshit. There are only three sorts of people: one." He raises a thumb. "Those who are happy with their soulmates because they're damn lucky and their soulmate is the person they would fall for anyway."

He raises his index finger.

"Two, those who are either actually happy or honestly believe they will be because they think _soulmate_ is something special and try a lot harder to make the relationship work than they would otherwise.

"And." He forgets to raise a third finger. "There are those who are unhappy but pretend like hell because they are to craven to admit their soulmate is an idiot."

She can only stare at him. Never in her life she has heard someone doubting the concept of soulmates.

"So you are alone. Like me." she finally says, unable to truly respond to what he just said.

He slumbs on his back and looks up at her with a dazzling smile, head thrown back on the armerest.

"We don't need to be alone. The two of us together, what better couple could there be?"

She would believe he is jesting, but his tone is far more serious than his demeanour suggests. He sits up again and his tone grows nearly solemn with his next words.

"Let's be together, Brienne. I've wanted to be for so long."

"But we can't be together! We. Are. Not. Each. Other's. Soulmates."

He looks hurt and when he speaks his tone is pleading.

"Brienne, I beg you! If you don't want me because you don't like me this way, say so and I promise I'll never bring it up again.

"But _don't_ turn me away because I don't have some weird pigment anomaly on my hand spelling your name!

"I don't want to be with you because I think you are my _fate_ but because I know you and I've grown to like you and you're strong and gentle and stubborn and funny and a damn good cop and the best listener I know and I believe myself to be the happiest man on earth because I met you!

"I'm not some guy who loves the idea of you as his soulmate but _you!_ Simply the breathtakingly amazing Brienne you are!"

Jaime falls silent and suddenly it is so quiet Brienne can hear her own heartbeat.

_That must be the nicest thing anyone has ever told me._

She has no idea what you say if someone just gave such a speech and the silence between them stretches and stretches.

The washing machine in the flat on the next floor starts spinning and somewhere in the distance a siren can be heard and still none of them says a word.

Then Jaime's expression grows hard, the way she knows her own does when she's hurting and doesn't want to show it.

She knows she needs to say, to do something but she can only watch like paralysed as he grabs his sweater from the chair, turns and leaves without looking at her once.

She hears the front door close, softly, not slammed like she half expected. She sits for a long time before she finally takes her mobile out, staring at Jaime's number, not knowing what she could say to apologise.

She briefly considers calling her father but they never talked about her soulmate after she met Renly. He had tried to but she had begged him to drop the topic every time and even though he looked worried and confused and a tad hurt that she wouldn't talk to him he had respected her wish.

She dials Renly's number.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who read the first part and especially to all those of you who left a comment or kudos! Feedback in any form is greatly appreciated!  
> So here the conclusion of the story, I hope you enjoy it!

The first thing she hears is a sleepy „Huh?“ and with a pang of guilt she realises most people are sleeping at this time.

“Brienne?"

She gives Renly great credit for seeming completely alert the very moment he realises it's her. He knows she is not the kind of person to call in the middle of the night as a joke.

“What is it? Are you ok?“

The honest concern in his voice makes her break into tears.

She hears him tapping out of his bedroom and closing the door, as not to disturb Loras' sleep. The thought that there are people who share a bedroom makes her sob harder.

“Hey, hey. Brienne. Tell me. Are you hurt? Physically, I mean?“

She manages to croak a no.

“Do you want me to come over? Has something happened to your dad? Breathe, in, out, good, there you go.“

He adapts his most soothing tone and she manages to bring the sobbing under control.

“M' dad's fine.“

“Then tell me, what happened?“

She grabs for a handkerchief and presses it over her eyes, not sure how to start.

"Do you... do you think one can love a person, really love, even if this person is not your soulmate? J... There is... I mean, I... I..."

She squirms, but Renly knows how to put her at ease.

"Let's just say there is someone, ok? You don't have to tell me who."

She takes a deep breath and continues.

"This someone... he has a soulmate, but... well, it's really complicated and he doesn't live with her and doesn't want to and...“

She drops her voice to an urgent whisper.

“Renly, have you ever heard someone saying that the thing with soulmates might not be true? He says there is no proof that your soulmate is really your soulmate, that we just call it soulmate because it sounds better but nobody knows how that with the names really works. He says... says he lo... loves _me_ and and wants be with me. Can that work? Can that be true?"

Renly hesitates.

"To be honest, I never thought about it. Soulmates, that's how we think it works, don't we? And... with Loras, I never had to ask myself whether I believed it or not. But... well, I don't know the slightest thing about how it works on a scientific basis, so..."

He falls silent for a moment.

"Does he seem sincere? Do you trust this person? Is it someone who cares about others? Do you know how his relationships to others that are close to him are?"

She thinks about Jaime who seems so rash at first sight, so uncaring.

And how she had had to correct that picture of him for the first time when he had told her how he had bought a pony and specially built saddle as a belayed birthday gift for Tyrion after the latter was crushed that his father had told him on his ninth birthday that he wasn't build for riding and should get those silly dreams out of his head. How Jaime's voice had shoken with rage over this injustice even after more than two decades.

For all his pretending, Jaime does care. A lot. Maybe not for a lot of people, but she is sure, those few he cares deeply for.

"I do. He trust care...“

She has to start the senctence again.

“What I want to say, I trust him and he cares.“

"And what about you? Do you love him? Do you want to be with him?" Renly asks.

She swallows hard.

"Yes."

Her voice is so tiny she is surprised he hears her.

"Then yes, it can be true. Go for it. You deserve happiness."

For a moment her mind is flooded with relief that Renly doesn't tell her she is a silly, desperate thing with fancy dreams in her head. Then the shame of how she treated Jaime crushes down on her.

"I think I botched it up. He told me he loves me and..."

She can't finish.

"And you froze and couldn't react like you wish you had?" Renly guesses in a gentle voice.

She makes an unhappy noise of agreement.

"Then go after him, Brienne. Tell him. He'll be crushed too at the moment and that makes two unhappy people too much.“

“What do I say?“ she whines.

“That he surprised the hell out of you and you couldn't think properly and that you love him.“

"Do you really thinks he still wants..."

"Brienne, if he loves you he would be an idiot if he would brush aside the chance to be with you just yet. You go and talk to him."

She sniffs.

"You think I can do it?"

"I know you can. You're facing down worse situations in your job on a near daily basis."

"Never ones where my or his heart is at stake." she murmurs.

Renly stiffles a laugh.

"Sorry, didn't mean to laugh at your situation. But don't you start getting all philosophical. Your leaving to talk to him now."

“And,“ he adds, „phone or text after you've spoken with him. I'm staying awake. In one case I'll let everything fall and rush at your side and offer what meager emotional support I can, in the other I'll drink on the two of you.“

“Do you know you're an amazing friend, Renly?“

“I hope I am. I really want to be. Especially for you.“

“Thanks.“

“Go.“

"Now?"

"Now." he confirms.

* * *

She arrives at Jaime's flat 30 minutes, 15 unanswered texts and five unsuccesfull tries to call him later.

She rings and knocks several times, hears him move inside, but he doesn't open.

"Jaime? Jaime, please, let me in!"

Staring a the door in front of her she debates a how big breach of trust he will consider her using the key she has for his flat and finally decides to risk it.

The hallway is dark when she enters. She removes her boots and hesitantly makes her way to the living room.

* * *

Jaime awaits her standing in the middle of the room. What anger there was in him has left completely, he seems to have aged decades over the last few hours, his face haggard and his hair in complete disorder.

He doesn't meet her eyes, stares at her feet instead.

Brienne takes a deep breath and opens her mouth, but he beats her at talking.

"Listen, Brienne, I'm sorry. I... I thought.... hoped you felt the same. I'm sorry that I made you feel uncomfortable. Sorry that I assumed... Please, don't let this change our friendship. I beg you. Being your friend means the world to me. I couldn't bear to loose you."

His voice is lower and hoarser than ever and it is the utter defeat in it that sends her moving.

She steps closer and gently puts a palm against his cheek. His green eyes focus on her and she sees a desperate spark of hope in them.

"Jaime." she manages.

His beard is prickly and his skin soft when she strokes his cheek with her thumb. His eyelids flutter shut.

She slides her other hand around the back of his head and tucks him forward to press her lips against his forehead.

Jaime throws his arms around her so forcefully he nearly gives her a bloody nose with his head but she only wrestles her arms from between them and hugs him back as closely as possible. His whole body is shaking, his face pressed against the junction between her neck and shoulder and she can feel his hot tears on her skin.

When she feels her own tears welling up she closes her eyes and burries her face in his golden hair. They stand for long minutes crying together, over all they feared to have lost but didn't.

It is easier to talk now that she holds him.

"It's me who should be sorry. And I am. Very much. I was so surprised, so stunned. I know it takes great courage to bare your heart to someone like this and should have reacted differently.

"I had never questioned the concept of soulmates and never dared to hope there would someday be a person wishing to share my life. The person whose name I wear doesn't have mine on his hand. I had sort of come to terms with the fact that I would remain alone. You caught me completely unaware with the possibility that it could be different."

"What a shitty world in which someone as amazing as you is made believe to be destined for a life in solitude." he mumbles.

He turns his head so far he can look at her. She has to crane her neck awkwardly to look back. Some of his golden eylashes are hold together by tears and she marvels that someone can look so stunnigly beautiful when just having cried.

Jaime raises a hand and begins whiping the tears from her face.

“If there wouldn't be a possibility to be with you I would challenge the whole world and the Seven themselves to make it possible.“

She has to smile. His face clearly tells he means every single word.

"Not necessary, I think."

"No?" he asks softly.

Brienne shakes her head and raises a hand to cup his chin. His eyes flicker between her lips and her eyes when she tips his face towards hers.

"I love you." she whispers and his whole face lights up. Her heart nearly burst with joy that she can have this effect on him.

When she first brings her lips to Jaime's she worries she will be too clumsy for his liking, but his content sigh and the way he combs his fingers through her hair erase every selfdoubt in a splitsecond.

She stands in the middle of his living room kissing him with every ounce of gentleness she posses.

It is a fact that she doesn't wear his name on her skin, nor he hers, and in all likelihood never will. 

And this fact, she sees with sudden clarity, _has no power at all over her happiness._


End file.
